Well both PS3 and Wii U numbers are pretty damn low, PS3 due to a combination of a longer than normal generation and a major softening of the console market in general. No way you slice it though, 16,654 is pretty pitifully low.
Just for a frame of reference, Wii did 86,395 in week 3 of 2007, PS3 did 21,105.
Wii U is about 12k under PS3's 2007 YTD at the same point and it's only going to slip further away as the weeks go on. Conversely, PS3 was 160k behind Wii U's current LTD by this point in 2007. PS3 had a pretty horrible 2007 too with numbers hovering around 20k in the first half, dipping under 10k by the summer. I may have missed a week here or there going over these numbers so I might be off here but it seems PS3 hit 70k in week 1, dropped like a stone, and couldn't do more than 63k for the rest of the entire year.
Dayum. I knew it was rough back then but I never realized how absolutely pathetic PS3's first full year was.
I realize that there may be an aspect of fanboy panhandling when I say this, but with the cooling Japanese PS3 software ecosystem having never been been too much hotter than lukewarm to begin with, I hope more japanese devs will start considering Wii U cross platform titles. The chances of any console selling like the Wii did in its early years are so monumentally slim. Even if PS4 outpaces the Wii U, the installed base just isn't going to be there. Unlike the previous gen, 3rd parties aren't going to have the enormous PS2 base to feed it in Japan so it seems like it'd be in their best interest to support PS3/PS4/WiiU between now and the end of 2014 in order to get by.
Then again, maybe most of em will just rely on the global market...though there aren't any guarantees there either.
